I think someone took a wrong turn at Albuquerque.

I would rather is a Turbo laser mod card that reads something like this and not a super AA ship.

Crack AA gunner team, count Crits as damage when shooting at short range 5 points.

the OPs ship would have to cost 100 points because it could kill every fighter on the table in 2 turns

and kill the whole star wars feel of the game with them.

If you don't want powerful fighters in the game you don't want star wars in the first place.

The quasar will have red AA dice

Is this confirmed?

Yes my opinion of an unannounced ship is confirmed

I would rather is a Turbo laser mod card that reads something like this

Crack AA gunner team, count Crits as damage when shooting at short range 5 points.

isnt there already a turbolaser mod that lets you reroll crits against squadrons? or is that a different slot?

8 point mod Ion Cannon that adds a blue dice.

If cluster bombs were an off retro instead of a defensive one then it wild actually get played

or if it wasnt so expensive for a one-shot.

I always felt it should either be basically an autokill to whoever hit you for that price, or be an exhaust instead of a discard. One ship tailing you now has to back off, preventing the random Firespray from hugging your butt so much, or any other rogue whether they have bomber or not.

Brahatok!

Yup, although at 90m, it's "flotilla"-sized, and no bigger.

Simple fix. Just allow ships to fire anti-squad and anti ship, so you can fire from 2 arcs with your anti-ship and 2 arcs with your anti-squad per turn. Not that the movies really influence the game mechanics, but Ackbar or Vader never stood in their command modules and went.

'Dang, do I shoot the ships or or the squadrons now?'

I would rather is a Turbo laser mod card that reads something like this

Crack AA gunner team, count Crits as damage when shooting at short range 5 points.

Now this is a totally acceptable suggestion and I am surprised we don't have this yet. Take note here, this is a reasonable and solid suggestion.

Seems reasonable, but I'd want it as a weapons team. If ship-based anti-squadron becomes more powerful, then the ship-based anti-ship damage needs to become less powerful in direct proportion. So, having to choose between gunnery teams and flak teams seems like a good trade-off.

I would rather is a Turbo laser mod card that reads something like this and not a super AA ship.

Crack AA gunner team, count Crits as damage when shooting at short range 5 points.

the OPs ship would have to cost 100 points because it could kill every fighter on the table in 2 turns

and kill the whole star wars feel of the game with them.

If you don't want powerful fighters in the game you don't want star wars in the first place.

All I really want is for quad turbo lasers to work on fighters attacking ships a medium range, I like quads because bombers should be at risk of taking a bit of damage when attacking large capital ships and rhymes ability to ignore this upgrade is a bit irritating. We already have ships that can rip fighters if they are in a mutually supporting deployment, that's why just throwing your bombers at a big group of ships without support will lead to dead bombers.

Read several posts and formed my thoughts on that, so I haven't read every post yet. But my thoughts are this, ruining the Squadrons in the game is just wrong. Squadrons are a integral part of the game. I have seen them use to good effect but they do not win games alone.

I could explain, because I have many times already, but there are players that just don't want to listen, they just want to be right. Well sorry but you're just not right here. Squadrons are a solid part of the game and you can't tell Chess players to just get rid of Rooks because you have been beaten by them. Next will there be threads insisting we get rid of Commanders? Objectives?

Now upgrades like the Flechett Torpedoes on a Raider does horrific things to Squadrons but I think it is a good upgrade. But insisting that Squadrons be just out right wrecked because you want to bring back Squadron free lists is just bad for the game all together. Not well thought out and if that is your position it is very myopic in view.

That is all I will say and I hope this line of thought is dropped soon because we don't need another thread on this topic. It is getting old and causing unneeded stress in the community.

Good day.

Not to disagree with you, but I think there is a difference, when discussing a capital ship response to fighters, between annihilating the squadron game and making it actually a threatening proposition for fighters to do their job.

Granting a screening ship with three dice AA is the former. Such a ship with concentrate fire can realistically threaten generic 4-hull fighters, wiping them out. Base 3 AA has a good chance of blowing up basic squadrons like TIE Fighters, TIE Interceptors, and Z-95s. There's a reason why no ship in the game has pushed 3 AA right now on a rating: and that's to prevent waves of oneshots for players who decide to take TIE swarms and similar. It's just too much damage out of one ship attacking every fighter.

That said there is a problem of capital ships flailing to defend themselves against fighters that has to be fixed. As an Empire player, most of my capital threatening power is in my capital ships (Rhymerballs at medium range and VTs is the only exception), compared to the smorgasboard of fighter abilities and great generic bombers in the Rebellion. TO respond to it I have to start taking fighters, the most efficient of which is the TIE Interceptor. At least, until Ten Numb rolls up with Adar Tallon, Toryrn Far, and Yavaris to easily wipe out my protection. Same thing with X-Wings and Shara bay rolling up to wipe out my screening fighters, and then proceeding to pummel my capital ships without response.

While I try to keep the timing of my fighters well and don't go into combat these days without flight controllers, I feel that some enhancement for my capital ships to better respond to fighters would be a great benefit to large-ship viability.

Without it, we're entering a universe where large ships are the exception rather than any kind of norm, because folks like Nora and her bomber friends make shields feel just as valuable as they do when attacked by APTs, and tournaments now hinge on how many fighters are brought or shot down.

The AA upgrades on capital ships are lacking. Cluster Bombs is a joke, I think we can all agree. Quad Lasers is useful if it didn't fail as hard as other single-blue die when attacking anything. Point-Defense Reroute would be worth if it reached out to medium range for things like ISDs and VSDs to take advantage of, but range 1 means it can only be used defensively... and one would start to wonder if Boosted comms enhancing fighters is the better option.

What the game needs to make big ships interesting and no so vulnerable to fighters is better generic upgrades for attacking fighters. They can be expensive, but if they are I want them to be good. They can be retrofits, officers, or teams. Just something to increase the threat potential against fighters, from capital ships.

Because right now only the carriers feel the most threatned by enemy capital ships. Fighters don't have to worry, suffering at most 2 damage and maybe getting toggled by Flichette torpedoes, but not dead. I want to see a universe where a bomber commander with two enemy capital ships nearby has to pause and consider which target he can attack while suffering the least amount of losses. Only QLTs gives that kind of pause now, and I can tell you after running multiple games with that upgrade, it is not as dangerous as you think it is. Single blue dice are too much of a disappointment to reliably call at threat to fighter squadrons.

I have two concerns with anti-squadron stuff.

On one hand, the ideal state of the game as a whole needs to support as much variety as possible. Strong anti-squadron ship options are good in this regard.

But on the other hand, I like the game to remain as "star wars-ey" as possible. "Fleet Combat" that doesn't require squadron support just feels... off. Star Wars isn't realistic space battles or even fantasy naval battles, it's star wars space battles. And Star Wars seems to show capital ships consistently weak against squadrons when not adequately supported by their own.

I have two concerns with anti-squadron stuff.

On one hand, the ideal state of the game as a whole needs to support as much variety as possible. Strong anti-squadron ship options are good in this regard.

But on the other hand, I like the game to remain as "star wars-ey" as possible. "Fleet Combat" that doesn't require squadron support just feels... off. Star Wars isn't realistic space battles or even fantasy naval battles, it's star wars space battles. And Star Wars seems to show capital ships consistently weak against squadrons when not adequately supported by their own.

I totally agree, fighters are one of the main weapon systems the star wars ships bring to the fight, they spend more space and man power on the ships for fighters then they do for the other weapons on the ships. star destroyers are Carriers, landing ship, battle ship hybrids. The rebs did not have many this type of hybrid war ship and needed to build self transporting fighters to support their bigger ships.

I agree there are challenges with dedicated AA ships in the game vs balances and continued squadron play. However being an old fan of the expanded universe Gunships and Lancer Frigates either as flotillas or small based capital ships would be cool. I have a feeling we will not be seeing the old expanded universe Lancer Frigate.

or if it wasnt so expensive for a one-shot.

I always felt it should either be basically an autokill to whoever hit you for that price, or be an exhaust instead of a discard. One ship tailing you now has to back off, preventing the random Firespray from hugging your butt so much, or any other rogue whether they have bomber or not.

It's four dice that count his and criss without allowing defenses (it's not an attack).

If it were an Offensive Retrofit it would be an auto-include for nearly every ship right now.

...But on the other hand, I like the game to remain as "star wars-ey" as possible. "Fleet Combat" that doesn't require squadron support just feels... off. Star Wars isn't realistic space battles or even fantasy naval battles, it's star wars space battles. And Star Wars seems to show capital ships consistently weak against squadrons when not adequately supported by their own.

On the other hand, I think this is a concern for heavy ship players like myself, we don't want a zoomed out version of X-Wing epic play. We came to this game to do most of the fighting and list-building for our starships. We don't want the game to be determined by what mix of squadrons you have on the table. Ships should be the end all decider of which list wins or not. And I'm not talking about which carriers and carrier upgrades are the winners.

Fighters is an interesting addition to the game, but I and I think others feel this should be a sideshow. And for that, we need some defensive upgrades for ships to put fighters back in their place.

Nora and friends can strip the shields of big ships easily. Combined with how hard it is now for big ships to harm fighters, something's wrong. The only reason I'm investing in my big ships now is to ramp up the fighter rating so my interceptors can mulch Nora and her friends and score points that way.

But if you were to ask me what I'd like Armada to be about, I want it to be about my decked out space gunships with a serviceable fighter screen. We are far from that reality. We may not go entirely back to that, but I want Imperial big ships to have reason to bank concentrate fire again.

I think Fletchette Torpedoes are gonna be a major game changer for the anti-squadron game. I just won a game about 2 hours ago with 2 Vics and 3 Raiders no squads against a Sato commanded X-wing swarm. It was so awesome to deactivate almost all of his squads before they could be used. I only won by about 50 points and I did lose my flagship vic so I need some practice with it but I think going squadless may be viable again.

But if you were to ask me what I'd like Armada to be about, I want it to be about my decked out space gunships with a serviceable fighter screen. We are far from that reality. We may not go entirely back to that, but I want Imperial big ships to have reason to bank concentrate fire again.

I'll agree that gunships with screen should be a viable archetype. And it could use some help right now. But only a little

When we look at list archetypes as a whole, carrier lists have substantially less hull & shields, are substantially less maneuverable, and put out very little ship-to-ship damage compared to a battle group. So, they have to put out enough anti-ship damage from the fighters to make up for that hull deficit. And the fighters need to have enough survivability that they will still be in the fight at the end.

Now, if the decisions in round 6 were "do I send my battered B-wings in to try to finish that wounded ISD?" and "Do I charge in with my ISD to try to get that last carrier?" then I'd be happy. But that needs the damage output against fighters to be low enough that both commanders are seriously considering running to save their ships & fighters. (and high enough that they will be on their last legs at the end of the fight.)

Wanting to just play Big Ship Battles is cool, options are great, play how you want and all.

But squadronless lists feel completely foreign to the "star wars" I know. I know the actual films are a small snapshot of the universe, but... is that even a thing anywhere? In the extended universe?

Wanting to just play Big Ship Battles is cool, options are great, play how you want and all.

But squadronless lists feel completely foreign to the "star wars" I know. I know the actual films are a small snapshot of the universe, but... is that even a thing anywhere? In the extended universe?

I do like squadronless lists but I've got to admit that they're not very thematic.

A lot of People got me wrong and judging without knowing me at all. Im not against squadrons and pushing for squadronless builds. Im the Guy who takes 120+ Points of squadrons usually. I dont want to Kill a part of the game, but bring diversity. One of you already mentioned: If Such a ship existed, the number of squadrons would drop. This Will result in a drop of aa ships. Then, the number of squads Will increase again. Just like in nature: Prey-predator. There would be a balance, like it happened to flotillas: People Take 1-3 every list, so now People started to use h9 massively.

My experience is: You go full squadron or you get killed and waste your Points. It didnt happen just once or twice when i faced 60-90 Points of squads, and most of the cases i got out of the fight without loosing any of my own. Thats Just not Good Enough. Imagine a 90 point Fighter ball with a dedicated aa support ship for~30 Points: That + 90 Points of fighters could challange that 120 Points with unpredictable outcome. Also, Such ship could count against your squadron allowance.

Finally, im glad some came up with reasons and Ideas. I see and agree that 3 dice would be too much, so 2 is fair, maybe 1 red 1 Blue, red changing with range.

So, thank you all who contributed positively, and please less boo-ing in the future. Ofc you can freely Express your opinions, but we are a positive, supporting Community, arent we? Keep being different, and lets show example to other commonities. Building is harder, but pays off on the Long run.

I see the Raider as just that. The AA ship capable of ship to ship combat. If we want a dedicated AA ship, you would see something like

Small base

Speed 2-3

1 blue, 1 red AA

1 blue anti-ship out each arc

3 hull

2 shields on each side, just 1 in back

2X Redirect, 1 Evade

I see the Raider as just that. The AA ship capable of ship to ship combat. If we want a dedicated AA ship, you would see something like

Small base

Speed 2-3

1 blue, 1 red AA

1 blue anti-ship out each arc

3 hull

2 shields on each side, just 1 in back

2X Redirect, 1 Evade

Drop the red AA, and it's pretty good. Red AA on a ship means you can shoot at every stand at once. Unless you are talking ISD level cost for this corvette-sized ship, it's powerful enough to eliminate squadrons from Armada.